Year || 503 Season || Fall Temp || 35℉ (℃) - 69℉ (℃) Weather || The iron grip of Summer has slowly faded into the gentler Fall embrace. The morning dew frosts over in the early morning hours and melts by the time the sun hits high in the sky. Many of the trees have traded their lush, vivid green for a more suitable array of red and orange hues. But don't blink, for Winter's cold embrace is fast upon Fall's heels.

"Are there lines she's crossing? Should she toe them or touch them with a pole and stay away wholly? But to avoid such a storm he offers, such a taste of life; to withhold herself from the chance to taste starlight, to love satin and silk and swallow pomegranate seeds not yet offered... She should be stronger." — Moira in Small as a wish in a well

"She had wrapped herself in a long silky cloak that gleamed in the starlight, and as she strayed up and down the deck like a grey ghost, the wind took hold of it and flicked it about her making it crack like a silken sail. It took fronds of her hair too and made them into lashes that beat her face and blew above her head."

What more than smoke and mirrors appears before thine mortal eye, twists truths to lies and hovers upon the brink of reality? How does one divine what is dream and what is fantasy, what is the truth and what is the lie? For pale lips slither into a smile so easily, but those eyes are not yet full of joy. Eyes of molten silver and ore, eyes of swamps and cloudy nights, eyes of dreams and secrets and mysteries that only the temples can answer and the returning call of ancient trees that have long since forgotten how to speak.

A summer storm given body, a succubus come home at last, a dreamer forged in starlight, Juniper is both ephemeral and eternal. Where she goes, eyes follow the curve of her brow and straightness of her nose, watch that stormy gaze quickly pass over any and all with nothing more than a glance or, if you're lucky, an invitation. Quickly they travel over her delicately broad cheeks, wispy golden feathers floating just behind her eyes, and arching neck that sweeps down into a deep, barreling chest. Slender is her waist, slender is the girl that walks on air and breathes in twilight lullabies like new treats meant only for her lips. Hips are left high; oh how they sway so easily from side to side as she passes, the answer to a question her watcher's never knew they'd been asking. At last, curious eyes fall on golden feet, golden slippers, so swift and soft when they enter and exit that they wonder, briefly, if she could be (would be) the perfect assassin dressed in white.

When she leaves on the whispering of the wind, only a puff of smoky feathers and silken ivory hair is seen as she rushes out. Rushes headlong into the line of duty, rushes through the sky faster than a bullet. For when airborne, Juniper would make the gods weep with the grace tucked neatly into each feather, the precision and speed and love given form and life through flight. It is more than a means to go from point A to point B, it is a dance, a slow seduction where never once must she touch ground.

“There's a special quality to the loneliness of dusk, a melancholy more brooding even than the night's.”

Skies hold her as their own, for Juniper is a mourning dove; she is nothing but vapor; she is the wind given form. When crafted not by the love of a mother and father, but by the hands of many to sooth and reprimand, to love and nurture, to grow into the perfect mix of heaven and earth, it is no surprise the woman that stepped forth at the end of the trial.

None would dare tell the sun not to shine nor would they tell the rain to fall backwards. So, too, should they be careful when in the presence of the young Hierophylake who has the heart of a lion thundering in her chest. Fiercely married to her religion, Juniper's breaths come and go as Vespera wishes it to be. Rescued so against her bosom, amongst the priestesses in the depths of the swamps, it was by the kindness of her matron goddess she survived, and so Juniper is fierce in her defense for her matron goddess. Upon a pedestal she's been placed, lazing idly with half-closed eyes while her faithful priestess breathes galaxies and black holes, planting faith and fear into the trembling heart of new fawns in her wake. She need not raise her voice above the dulcet tones of melodies and bird-song when she spreads word of praise, for such passion spews from her mouth, her eyes, her heart, that it is hard not to be pulled in to the enigmatic girl's beliefs.

Oh, and how that passion spills into everything, everything.

The Pegasus grew in a den of snakes, where bodies would convene and curl about one another in an unending net until all were protected, connected, and warm. They were unafraid to show their fondness with a gentle kiss, a flirty laugh, or even just a look that sent the other woman tittering into another room. Oh, she learned to be bold from them and to love others as she loves herself: wholly and with everything she is. How it taught Juniper to share, to extend a hand to all no matter how large or small or strange they may seem.

There is a difference, you see, between sharing a being and sharing an object. What passes between one soul to another changes just as no two twilights will ever be the same. But what is hers - her breath, her bangles, her hymnals - should not leave her chambers. A person is different than an object, and objects she claims, jewels and offerings she crafts for Vespera, are near sacred and wholly for the priestess' hands. Kind eyes turn skin into kindling when boundaries are overturned, gentle lips turn scathing when those that do not belong seek to destroy all she cares about. It paints her into a wild thing with braided hair and dangerous eyes - eyes that see actions as an affront to her goddess, sins that must be paid for through nothing less than sacrifice and blood.

Juniper is many things and comes in many flavors - a lover, a fighter; a priestess and a lamb as a part of the flock; a sister, a daughter... But most of all, she is unashamedly free like the winds that carry her heart to the edges of the earth and back again.

"I have always loved the wind, for it comes to me so boldly, touches my skin. In coldness it rouses me to wakefulness, an alertness that lets me savour the moments in dryness and rain just the same. In soft breezes it is finer than silk, smoother than water. In the gales it sings through the trees, sending loose leaves on a dancing funfair ride, hypnotic, beautiful. In the summertime wind is cooling, allowing the warmth to gently enter muscle and bone while my skin feels so at ease with the world. Today is almost still and I find myself in joyful anticipation, absorbing the bright colours of the new foliage and buds, taking a moment to watch a dragonfly pass by, its back a brilliant electric blue"

They are all she knows, the Halcyon unit and those priestesses who took care of her.

Juniper, unlike many children, was not given the chance to know who her sire and dam were. Perhaps she was birthed out of wedlock or shame or simply unwanted. Perhaps the stars did not align and her parents were too young, too green, not yet ready for a bouncing baby girl. Perhaps so many things could have gone wrong, things she does not dwell on and neither should you.

Instead, her earliest memories are of them. The priestesses of Vespera, the Women of Dusk with hearts as murky and beautiful and mysterious as their matron goddess. From misty mornings they rose in those swampy temples, bright eyes nearly reflective upon surfaces of water, surfaces of stone, in every light they seemed to see. Bright robes of sunsets and sunrises were often heavy upon their shoulders - always cloaked, always mysterious. Oh, but it is these women - never a man was seen in the temple where Juniper was trained - who picked up a young Pegasus girl and rocked her in their moonstone cradles. Gentle hands would brush her hair in the morning and braid it back, feed her when she was too young and too naïve to know what, or how to survive on her own.

Hooded figures of women tall and devout lurk through misty halls in her mind, phantoms rising up to remind her where her roots lie, where she first was taught to live. It is their star-flecked lips that pressed to her brow time and again, careful ministrations putting bandages on scraped knees and pulling debris from nearby trees from her wings, wise words always guiding her towards acceptance, towards love.

Juniper remembers how they listened to her tails of the wind whispering each day. Every night, when the world would settle and the stars would not yet awaken to sparkle and flirt from the sky, when the crickets chirp and day-walkers settle in, she would rise. Not purely from her bed, no. Through the temple Juniper raced, faster and faster until she was a mere blur, a streak of silver on marble floors that zoomed through archways set in triplets about their home, and at last she would break free from a final air-viewing gallery into the surrounding swampland. Pale wings took her high into the woodland canopies, ancient trees and their spirits staring down upon her to shed far too much wisdom than they could ever (and will ever) voice to any mortal in their midst. It is the wind that kisses concrete the same as her skin, that blessed her so greatly, that soothed the song of unrest and unease and confusion in her blood, that truly captivated her. How sweet that voice which whispered no matter the day or night!

'Vespera favors you, for not all can decipher the secret of the breeze,' is what Sinafay would tell her, crooning gently in the morning when once more Juniper would fall into a heap of down pillows and silken blankets from sheer exhaustion. For it was the skies that would hold her all night, the stars her sole companion, and the storms soon were an old friend that she learned to brave, to weather and dance among when they came calling.

When you ask, Juniper will not tell you of her parents, but of the Priestesses of Vespera who live in the swamps of Terrastella. She will hold you close as she kisses your brow, paints a picture of praise and beauty of her goddess whom she was taught to love so faithfully, as faithfully as she loves the skies. Then, when you find her truly settled, simply dreaming and remembering and merely existing, it is then that she will whisper the tale of Halcyon to you. Halcyon, the man tasked to save a life, and in doing so gave his own. Halcyon, a young Pegasus in the army meant to kill, but united two nations so that war would not plague their lands. Halcyon who is the psalm upon her lips when she first kisses the night skies awake, breathing stardust into the heavens until even the moon cannot help but smile upon her.

It is he who, like many others, drew her in to the center of Terrastella, to the sprawling city where so many dwell. Where sweltering heat is simply the taste of salt upon one's tongue, the drip of sweat so mundane that none seem to mind, nor worry, of the nearness in the crowds with bodies pressing closer and closer. The soldier pulled Juniper from her temple in the swamps, but a young thing still untried in the world of men and others. All she knew was her goddess and the priestesses, having been trained to take up the mantle there before Halcyon and his brave-heart drew her away. He brought her to the army, to the air-flight unit who took her with little more than an unimpressed glance to harden soft curves, to shape her life to be a muse, an inspiration, and to make use of her where she might make a difference and save even a single life one day (no matter how many she should take). So Juniper went, as many young, spirited things do, into the arms of the awaiting aerial unit and immersed herself within their family, their wings and sameness both a comfort and oddity. For her robed priestesses had no wings nor horns, they wore bones and bark and berries and gems, but they were of the earth, of the swamp.

Juniper has always been of two worlds: the earth and the sky where gravity does not quite know how to hold her in its arms and the sky cannot find a place so easily to place her in the heavens. So she soars between the two, a messenger seen only in pale flashes above, so quickly that you aren't sure if you simply hallucinated that streaking creature or if she were truly there. Like her parents, she is a phantom left for bedtime stories to all but her unit.

born Spring 499

Active & Parvus Magic

Passive Magic

Bonded

Armor, Outfit, and Accessories

OUTFIT as part of 503 Fall Incentives

A cloak of shimmering gray that looks as though the heavens on a stormy day were captured rests about Juniper's back, falls carefully around her wings, and sweeps behind her as a great cap when streaking through the skies. Gold lines the edges in a delicate lace, reminiscent of Victorian collars and veiled truths, it shimmers and shines, it winks and carefully licks along the cloak like a fire with a small floret pattern. Upon her tail a gold cuff sweeps it down into half a braid, similar bracelets adorning her legs with varying markings dedicated to Vespera and the gods of Novus. And at last, a small satchel hides, buried under braids and fabric so that only the sharpest of eyes can make out the shape among the mass of cloth. It is the pouch which she delivers those secret messages in, her most important possession as a courier for the crown